Kathe Donovan

ASBURY PARK - Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno walked onto the boardwalk here with GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie and stood at his side as he formally affirmed her as his choice for lieutenant governor.

"We are here to make history," announced Christie. "After a great deal of consideration, yesterday I called Kim Guadagno and I am thankful to say that she said yes."

Christie heralded the Iowa-born Guadagno's record as a crimebuster during her time as Assistant U.S. Attorney under Michael Chertoff in the 1990s, her past service on the Monmouth Beach local governing body, and what he cited as her aggressive one-and-half-year tenure as sheriff, during which time she has backed down unions and advocated for beefed-up federal powers for local law enforcement to combat illegal immigration.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie and Bergen County Clerk Kathe Donovan talk to former Bergenfield Mayor Roberto Rivas, a Corzine backer.

BERGENFIELD - This was a decidedly Manny Pacquiao crowd here gathered for the Filipino Heritage Festival, where images of the world's pound-for-pound greatest prizefighter abounded.

Although not ostensibly a boxing contest, under the mid-summer hoopla in this precious voter stronghold of Bergen County could be identified two fierce political camps: one in the corner of Gov. Jon Corzine and organized by former Bergenfield Mayor Roberto Rivas and the other backing former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie and bucked up by the Rev. Gaudy Soriano, pastor of Faith Restoration Center Inc. of Jersey City.

Soriano is a big Christie fan going back to when the two men shared a stage at the funeral of the Glenn D. Cunningham, the mayor of Jersey City.

Soriano saw a third speaker, the Rev. Al Sharpton, gearing up to speak on that day, and promptly collared a Cunningman handler and asked that Christie be allowed to talk before Sharpton, lest the lawman's remarks get lost on the other side of the famously flamboyant preacher.

"I think people see him as an everyday man who is upset about the situaton we are facing in New Jersey," the reverend said today as he made the rounds with Christie from one vendor's booth to the next in a town dubbed Bergen's little Manila, home to 15,000 Filipino-Americans.

Assembly Minority Whip Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield), right, at a GOP event earlier this year with Chris Christie.

GOP sources confirm that GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie is assessing Assembly Minority Whip Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield) as a potential running mate.

Contacted about the information coming from three sources, Bramnick said, "no comment."

A moderate Republican and staunch longtime ally of Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr., (R-Westfield), who became whip two years ago, built some statewide campaign cred in the 2007 cycle and generated buzz as a possible 2008 candidate for U.S. Congress in the 7th Congressional District before electing not to run, Bramnick last year also founded the progressive policy committee as a way to focus Assembly Republicans on environmental, women's and other issues.

Bramnick backed Christie for governor before the U.S. Attorney's formal announcement last year, and in late January threw a $3,400-a-head fundraiser for the budding gubernatorial candidate at his Westfield home.

Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno

In recent years, a few inter-party contests stand out as wars, and as George W. Bush's numbers threatened to flat-line in New Jersey, Democrats felt a surge of confidence in Monmouth County, where they ramrodded GOP excess and Bush backlash into annual wins on the freeholder board and a Senate victory by Ellen Karcher for territory that could be described as leaning in their favor but finally uneasy.

2007 proved the Democrats' penultimate chance to squeeze as much citizen angst as possible out of the GOP's control of Monmouth and Bush's perceived deepsixing of his own party, and nowhere was the countervailing intensity better demonstrated than Jennifer Beck's challenge of Karcher in the 12th District and, in less publicized if no less intense fashion, Kim Guadagno's battle with Belmar Police Chief Jack Hill for a vacancy at county sheriff.  

Both women won - Guadagno narrowly - and in the process earned reputations as tough, well-prepared campaigners.

Consequently, at various stages of Chris Christie's journey as a Republican gubernatorial candidate, Beck and Guadagno have been mentioned in GOP circles as potential candidates for lieutenant governor, with the former's name surfacing as early as last summer while Christie was still U.S. Attorney, then fading for the most part; and Guadagno's coming louder late in the process here.

Bergen County Clerk Kathe Donovan, who got the most votes of any county-wide candidate last year, today endorsed John Driscoll and Robert Hermansen for freeholder.

Donovan made the endorsement in a letter to county committee members and elected officials, who will vote to award the party line to two of four candidates for freeholder at Thursday’s convention at Bergen County Republican headquarters in Hackensack.   

“Robert Hermansen and John Driscoll are the kind of strong, positive, issue oriented candidates who can not only win but help the entire ticket in November. They think, work and act like winners,” wrote Donovan. 

Bergen County Clerk Kathe Donovan, who just won her fifth five year term as county clerk last month, does not rule out the possibility of becoming a candidate for Lieutenant Governor next year. 

But she’s not running for it.

“First of all you don’t run for it. The way I understand the law is people select you after the primary,” she said.

With state agencies ready to cut back and homeowners potentially not getting rebate checks next year, Bergen County Clerk Kathe Donovan thinks it’s about time the state forces its two professional football teams to make some sacrifices.

But does she also think it’s about time to kick off a statewide campaign?

Donovan sent a letter to Gov. Jon Corzine asking him to consider forcing the New York Giants and Jets, who both play in Bergen County and receive millions in economic incentives from the state, to share part of their $800 million in windfall profits from the sale of Personal Seat Licenses.

“’Everything on the table’ means that Trenton’s commitment to return homestead rebates to hard pressed property tax payers may be broken. Aid for schools in suburban, rural and urban districts may be cut and state colleges will be forced to raise tuition costs to make up for reduced state aid,” wrote Donovan. “Hospitals here in Bergen County and elsewhere that rely on Medicaid and Charity Care payments will almost certainly see a significant reduction in state aid which could force a cutback in services. And this comes at a time when workers are being forced to switch from high paying to lower paying jobs without health care benefits which will add significantly to the Charity Care burden borne by hospitals at a time when Charity Care payments could be reduced.”

With two prominent Democratic leaders indicted, a subpoena dropped on the clerk of the Democratic controlled freeholder board shortly before the election, and running against three incumbents who all had been voted out of municipal offices in their hometowns over the last couple years, Bergen County Republicans still could not pick up a single freeholder seat.

“Those guys did an outstanding job, to be honest. We were in this thing right until the end. So from that perspective, I thought it was a huge improvement – especially over four years ago,” said Republican consultant Thom Ammirato, who ran the campaign.

It’s not as if the Republicans had everything working for them. Ammirato argued that, despite the corruption issue, Democrats had a myriad of advantages, most of all having Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, not to mention the power of incumbency. Presidential years in Bergen County are generally the strongest ones for Democrats. It’s the off years that Republicans tend to come closer.

Only in New Jersey: Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin goes moose hunting in Hackensack, only to learn a Bergen County Republican freeholder candidate was once a socialist.

The humorous radio ad, produced by the Bergen County Democratic freeholder and county clerk slate, has drawn outrage from the Bergen County Republicans, who called part of it an attack on Freeholder candidate Paul Duggan’s Irish heritage.

The ad, which is interspersed with moose calls, begins with an unidentified male voice asking a Palin impersonator what she’s doing in Hackensack.

“Me and my maverick friends hear that there’s some darn good moose hunting here,” she says, before adding that she’s heard that “the Republican candidates are some pretty serious reformers.”

The Bergen County Republicans promised to raise the specter of indicted Democratic Chairman Joe Ferriero a campaign issue, and they’ve done so, tying alleged corruption within the party to higher taxes in a new campaign commercial called “Corruption Tax.”

The advertisement, which was produced by the Bergen County Republican Organization, shows someone wearing an FBI jacket in front of a giant Bergen Record headline about Ferriero’s indictment on eight corruption counts last month.

In front of a pile of cash are pictures of Democratic incumbents Bernadette McPherson, David Ganz and Vernon Walton.

“Party boss Joe Ferriero gave them millions. They did what he told them. The Democrats raised spending $133 million,” says the narrator. “Waste. Abuse. Patronage. Now Ferriero is indicted for corruption. Higher taxes plus corrupt government equals corruption taxes. You pay.”